


Unfinished Business

by tree_and_leaf



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: F/M, Resolved Sexual Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-04
Updated: 2011-03-04
Packaged: 2017-10-16 02:41:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/167548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tree_and_leaf/pseuds/tree_and_leaf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Liz has unfinished business with the Brigadier. She thought she’d accepted it would have to stay that way…</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unfinished Business

She had wanted him at the time, though she hadn’t wanted to admit it. Exchanged easy banter, listened sympathetically when he ranted about the Doctor. Ranted about the Doctor while he listened sympathetically. Drunk whisky with him late at night after they’d saved the world again. Very carefully not thought about what it would be like to reach out and mess up the carefully slicked down hair…

And then there had been that night when – she couldn’t even remember who had moved first, but her hand had been on his arm and his hand on her thigh, and she felt her stomach tighten, and then she had had seen his gaze fall. He was looking at her leg, at the length of stocking and the hem of her short skirt, but what he saw was his hand and the wedding ring, and his face changed, and she knew it would be no good. He left shortly afterwards, and the next morning, he called her “Miss Shaw,” as if nothing had happened.

Part of her was relieved; she’d never met Mrs Lethbridge-Stewart, but she had her standards. She wasn’t interested in marriage and domesticity, but that was no excuse for harming another woman. Even if canteen gossip suggested they were on the rocks, anyway. She wasn’t going to be the one to destroy Alastair’s marriage. He’d only end up hating her. Or wanting to marry her.

She didn’t want to marry him. She just wanted to touch him, to break his self-control, to see what he looked like when he wasn’t being proper and bound by QR. But he didn’t strike her as the sort of man who normally did casual, and – well, probably it was partly that single-mindedness she found attractive, but it wasn’t what she was looking for.

If only he didn’t look so damned - ruffleable.

*

She went back to Cambridge. She hadn’t enjoyed saying goodbye to him; it had been a perfectly cordial and proper parting between colleagues, and all the time she’d felt the urge to – what? Do something, say something, anything to break the silence that had been between them since that night. But that was a grand romantic gesture, and the situation didn’t merit grand romantic gestures. It was just… oh, just unfinished business. Unfinished business that had better stay that way, come to think of it.

She wasn’t all that likely to see him again, she thought. Good.

*

Only then one evening there he was. She was guest lecturing at KCL, and there must have been some sort of conference taking place that day, because as she came down into the entrance hall, there he was, milling about with a lot of political science looking types, looking positively exotic in his uniform – the regular army uniform, thank God, not those awful pyjamas they had inflicted on UNIT, and moodily prodding a cup of tea with his teaspoon. Last coffee break of the day, presumably. The coffee here was dreadful.

“Brigadier!” she said, and he looked up, startled.

“Miss Shaw! What an unexpected pleasure! Though I suppose it’s much less surprising that you should be here than I should.”

She smiled. “Do you have plans for later? Perhaps we could go for a drink.”

“That would be nice.” He appeared to undergo a brief internal struggle. “In fact – the food was dreadful last night, and we’ve nothing on the agenda after the next session. Is there anywhere round here you can get a half decent dinner?”

*

There was no ring on his finger, and the white mark was beginning to fade back into tan.

“Just one of those things. I don’t blame Fiona,” he said, “damn hard life being an soldier’s wife, and she’s not from a service family. Don’t think she knew what she was getting into. Probably my fault for not spelling it out at the time, but I was a young fool in those days… Enough about me. How’s Cambridge?”

“Blessedly quiet. No aliens, no Silurians – and that’s a ridiculous name for them, you know – no plastic dummies, though I admit I occasionally wonder about some of the Fellows. Positively dull.”

“I doubt that. You never struck me as the sort of person who was dull. It’s not been the same without you about. The Doctor gets his way far too often.”

She looked over her glass at him, and he dropped his gaze. Ah she thought, and again she felt the urge to reach out and ruffle his hair. One could hardly do that in public, though.

“It’s all relative, isn’t it?” she said, “But there have been some things I’ve missed.” And she gently touched his calf with her foot.

He did not change colour, but he was breathing rather harder, she thought.

*

They were leaving the restaurant, when he said, reluctantly, “When’s your train? We could get another drink, but I mustn’t make you miss it.”

“The last train’s at half past eleven,” she said. She hesitated. She knew what she wanted to say, but she wasn’t entirely sure how he’d take it. And then she thought, to hell with it. The worst he could say was no, and it’s not as if they were colleagues. She stopped, and he stopped too, looking at her.

“I don’t need to be in Cambridge until tomorrow afternoon,” she said, “and –there’s no-one to wait for me, either.” She looked him full in the eyes, and laid her hand on his chest, and he reached out to her –

And then he stopped, and drew back.

“You’re a lovely woman,” he said, “And I want – but – Miss Shaw – I’m – well, I’m damaged goods. You deserve better than a divorced, repressed, old soldier, and I’m damned if I’ll treat you like some cheap tart to rebound off.”

“I know what I want,” she said, almost irritably. “I’ve wanted it for a lot longer than I cared to admit. And as for the rest – I’m not asking you to marry me, but I’m not after something meaningless. There are more categories of women than ‘wife’ and ‘cheap tart,’ you know.”

He flushed. “I – you see, I’m a hopeless dinosaur. It would never work.”

“I’m a scientist,” she said, “and it offends me to see people theorizing ahead of their data. Why don’t we see what it is before we decide whether it works or not?”

“I –” he said. He was breathing hard. She was vaguely surprised at herself. She wasn’t given to pushing men, it wasn’t her style, and she wasn’t given to casual pick-ups, either, but. It wasn’t exactly casual. She wanted him. She wanted him more than she’d wanted anything for a very long time, and she had seen the look in his eyes when she made her suggestion…

“I know why you wouldn’t before,” she said, “You didn’t want to break your word. I liked you even more for it. I don’t sleep with married men. But – honestly, the situation’s different now, and – well, you could be eaten by a dinosaur or something tomorrow. Life’s too short for regrets… you’re surely not afraid of me, Brigadier?”

He swallowed, hard. “Perhaps I am, a bit. I’m not used to women being so direct.”

She thought, with a flash of cynicism, not women of his own class, anyway. But she reached out for him again. This time he did not draw away, but gently put his arm around her.

“Liz. My dear. If we’re going to do this, for God’s sake, stop calling me Brigadier!”

She said nothing, but reached up and kissed him, hard, and her hand closed, tightly, on his hair.

*

They went to the flat he was using. “MoD property,” said the Brigadier. “They don’t like UNIT brass going to hotels. Not discreet or some such nonsense, you’d think the assembled alien hordes were employing the KGB… No, it’s alright, it’s not a safe house as such; your security clearance is perfectly adequate.”

His hands shook a little as he unlocked the door. “Whisky? There’s some passable Antiquary.”

*

The MoD clearly did not expect its officers to entertain; the sitting room was tiny, brown and smelled of several generations of cigarettes, and the bedroom was no better. It wasn’t the sort of room one might have fantasized about.

But it made her feel better. It was real, not – well, not the fantasies she had never admitted to having. But there he was, kissing her back, his hands on her arse, running his hands over her, and she was tugging off his tunic, brushing her hand deliberately over his groin… He had gasped, and pushed her back against the wall, and he had his hand under her skirt and between her legs. She hadn’t been so turned on in years, she thought, as the blood pounded within her, and for a moment she wanted nothing more than to have him inside her, right there, right now, against the wall. But – no. She had waited long enough for this. She would take her time. There might never be another.

And then again, there might. She rather hoped there might.

*

He was supine on the bed, naked, and she was sitting above him, still in her bra and knickers. Looking down at the hard length of him, she caught her breath with anticipation… She was about to reach for her handbag and the condom, when he caught her hand.

“May I?” Her hair was still up, she realized. She bent forward, and he reached up, and undid the clasp, and she shook out her hair.

“God, Liz,” he said, voice raw. “Is every man in Cambridge blind? Or mad? Or queer?”

“Very few of them have seen me like this.”

“But haven’t they got an imagination? Good God, woman, do you realize what your legs could do to a man?”

“I can see what they do to you,” she said archly, and squeezed them tighter against his sides. He groaned, but brought his hand down, to skim his hand down her stomach and between her legs.

“You…" he said, "I wanted you the moment you walked into my office and were so go-to-blazes off-hand.”

“Really?”

“And I knew I could never have you. Quite apart from the fact that everything I did seemed to infuriate you.”

“Oh yes. You were the most infuriating man I’d ever met.” She ran her hand, lightly, down his chest.

“And then you met the Doctor?”

“Oh no. Well, yes, but you can’t stay angry with the Doctor. He’s like a child. A child with the brains of several Senior Wranglers put together, but a child nonetheless. Whereas you, you infuriating, maddening, ridiculous, gorgeous man…”

“Yes,” he said hoarsely, reaching up to undo her bra, “What did you want to do to me?”

“I wanted to crack that perfect, disciplined façade, knock the stuffing out of you, and show you exactly what I thought of your pomposity.”

“Well,” he said, and ran a fingernail across a nipple, so that she gasped. “Perhaps you’d better show me, Liz…”


End file.
